


Full Circle

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Awesome Jody Mills, Awesome Sam Winchester, Castiel in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Daddy Cas, Daddy Dean, Dean Winchester is Bad at Feelings, Dean and Cas Have A Son, Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, Emotionally Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Guilty Dean Winchester, John Winchester Being an Asshole, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Married Castiel/Dean Winchester, Past Mpreg, Uncle Sam Winchester, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-12 09:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17464550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: John Winchester’s return should be a cause for celebration, and Castiel desperately wants to be happy for his family.But John has returned to a very different world, and two very different sons, whom he is not prepared to share with thismonsterliving in the bunker, especially one that is somehow raising a half breed with his oldest boy.





	Full Circle

**Author's Note:**

> This was a difficult one to write. I don’t want anybody to hate Dean, though there may well be moments of **WHAT**. 
> 
> Nothing he does in here can be excused but, at the same time, I don’t think either of those boys were so much as raised by John Winchester as they survived him.
> 
> And I think they both bear the scars.
> 
> Anyway, on to the story.

Ezra’s been a little restless of late, especially in the early hours; since only one of his fathers needs sleep, and Cas picks up on the baby’s distress before it’s loud enough to wake Dean, he’s settled into a little routine.

He doesn’t really mind; it something he can share with his son. Picking him up, and gently rocking him as he slips out of their room, singing to him quietly as he walks him through to the kitchen and heats a bottle, then retreats to the garage.

It’s not the warmest room in the bunker, but Cas is easily able to keep the baby warm without having to run the Impala for heat, so he and the little one can sit in the front seat.

Dean knows of their son’s fascination with his other dad’s car, and Cas knows he’s gleeful beyond belief about it; apparently this means their child has amazing taste.

Cas wouldn’t, but he’s kind of tempted by Sam’s suggestion to tell Dean that Ezra settles quicker in the Prius he won in a poker game but is seldom used (more because, Cas is sure, Dean seems mortally offended by its existence never mind its presence in the bunker).

The idea of it does amuse him, though, when Dean starts reading car manuals to their son, and even manages to somehow find a baby mobile online with tiny impalas that swirl above Ezra’s bed.

But it’s because of this nighttime routine that someone is near enough the door to hear the knocking, heavy and desperate.

Cas settles Ezra in his car seat, and reaches out with his Grace to nudge at Dean and Sam, to let them know someone is outside.

He draws his angel blade, but waits until his husband and his brother are by his side.

Sam stays close to the car, to Ezra, ready to snatch him up and take him to safety at the first sign of trouble (whatever happens, they have a plan, one of them will always be responsible for Ezra and take him and run if there is danger).

Dean and Cas move to the door, and Dean leans his ear against the metal.

“Yeah?”

“D-Dean?”

Dean glances at Cas, shrugs. “Who’s there?

“Dean...Dean, is that you? Dean, let me in, Dean…. Dean, it’s your father.”

++

Castiel never met John Winchester; there have been times he’s been glad for that, because he isn’t sure he could keep from smiting the man who caused his family so much pain.

And yet when Dean and Sam sometimes spoke of him, there was only sometimes bitterness; the wounds weren’t as raw as they had been.

Often, they could laugh, or at least not hurt.

They had loved him. 

They do still.

Castiel can see that. They’re wary about him, but gentle and cautious. Once they’re sure of who he is, that he isn’t a ghost or a shapeshifter or something false and intent on harming their family (it takes Castiel to finally reassure them that this man is in fact their father, alive and returned to them), John is swiftly embraced.

They wrap him in blankets since he’s freezing, somehow. He isn’t hurt, but he’s exhausted and hungry.

Castiel looks after Ezra as Sam pours hot sweet tea into their father, and Dean hastily heats some soup and brings it through to the war room with thick chunks of bread.

They quiz him, carefully, but John has no idea of how he’s been returned, just that he found himself a mile or so from the bunker, and somehow knew which direction to go, and that he’d find his sons there.

But he hadn’t expected to find they weren’t alone, and he keeps eyeing Castiel, and the baby, while he eats soup and drinks tea, and finally he stares directly at him, and addresses him for the first time that night.

“So? You a hunter too?”

Castiel hasn’t been able to relax since John stepped over the threshold. He wishes he could simply be happy for Sam and Dean, because their father is back, and they are happy, more than happy, for it.

But he feels like John already knows the answer to that question. After all, Castiel was the one the brothers looked to so they could be sure John was _John_.

That aside, Castiel is sure John knows that he and Ezra are different. Not just not hunters, but not human.

And the way John glances suspiciously from him to Dean doesn’t comfort him at all.

++

John sleeps almost twelve straight hours after Sam and Dean help him into one of the spare bedrooms.

Castiel lies with Dean in his arms, Ezra on his chest, soothed by the rise and fall, and Dean’s hand resting lightly on the baby’s back.

“Are you alright,” he says, quietly. “This is…. This must be more than a shock for you.”

Since John turned in, Dean has swung from a near giddy level of joy to something more sober, quieter.

“I never thought I’d see him again,” he says, and Castiel spends a moment taking that in. Soulmates share Heaven, but family do as well; what type of afterlife would it be if the people you cared for were kept from you?

To hear that Dean expected to _never_ meet his father again says more than he suspects Dean is aware of.

“And now he’s here,” Castiel says. “ _Are_ you alright?”

Dean half smiles, but Castiel isn’t fooled. It’s been a long time since Dean could distract him with a grin or a cheeky jibe, or drive him back with the wicked edge of his tongue.

“He’s got a lot to catch up on,” Dean says. “We’re different. Our lives are different. Maybe...maybe he is too.”

Castiel hopes it’s so, but he finds himself wishing Dean and Sam don’t pin everything on John being a different man than the one who left them cold and hungry in motel rooms for days on end.

But perhaps he’s being too harsh.

It’s just that even if something happened to him, he knows Dean would never do that to Ezra, and neither would he if the unthinkable occurred and he lost Dean.

He would grieve; oh, Father, his heart would _break_ , but he would take care of their son.

Maybe, even if John is no different, things will be better. Maybe this will be a second chance for John Winchester, a chance to make things right.

++

The next morning is a little warmer than previous days; spring has turned the weather mild, and Castiel seizes the opportunity to get Ezra some fresh air.

It also gives Sam and Dean a chance to have some time with their father, to catch up with him, or even just, for now, get used to him being back.

And for him to get used to these grown men who are both so different and yet much the same as the boys he left behind.

He keeps one hard protectively against Ezra’s back, glancing down frequently to make sure their little one is alright.

He still isn’t used to the smattering of freckles that cover the baby’s nose and cheeks. He has those, and he has Dean’s eyes, but Dean teases that the untameable shock of black hair can only come from one person.

And so as not to leave Sam out, Dean swears he’ll never let Ezra wear it long enough to put in a man bun, which starts a tit for tat that has Castiel covering the baby’s ears, just in case.

Still, after an hour walking the forest around the bunker, Castiel starts back and lets himself in before heading to the kitchen for coffee and to start breakfast for the others, presuming they haven’t already eaten.

When he finds Sam loitering in the hallway outside the kitchen, he’s surprised to realise his brother is eavesdropping.

Sam hears him coming, and looks around but he doesn’t seem guilty at being caught.

Instead, he looks furious, and a little ashamed.

He hurriedly intercepts Castiel before he can get any closer, turning him around, steering him away.

“Just, uh, you wanna come in the library with me?”

Castiel is half way there before he realises Sam is very determinedly trying to keep him out of that room.

“What’s going on?” He digs his heels in, stops, and Sam has no hope of moving him like that.

Sam has a hard time looking at him. “Dean and Dad were...They were just catching up, you know? Wanted to give them some privacy.”

 _Yet you were standing outside listening to them_. Castiel glances shrewdly at Sam, but whatever is going on Sam clearly doesn’t want him to know.

He gets the feeling Sam thinks that’s for his own protection.

Whatever _is_ going on, Castiel wants to know, but he can read the desperation from Sam and decides for the younger Winchester’s sake that it can wait.

Not for too long, though. If something’s going on here, in his home, with his family, then he will find out.

++

Dean’s been busy most of the morning, so much so that Castiel hasn’t seen him once, and neither has Ezra.

And that hasn’t happened since the day Castiel gave birth to him, in the infirmary, Sam pressed up against his back, helping him bear down, while Dean yelled encouragement and finally caught their son as he came screaming into the world.

It ruins the mood of earlier, and starts an annoyance brewing in him that he hasn’t felt in some time.

He tries to remind himself that only yesterday the father his humans had thought lost was inexplicably returned to them, and that is a huge thing.

He doesn’t want to be selfish.

But it’s one thing for Dean to not have time for him (Castiel isn’t the possessive, demanding type). It’s completely another for Dean to not have time for Ezra, and their son seems to feel the lack of attention from his other father keenly.

He won’t settle.

Even Sam has time for the baby, taking him from Castiel for a bit and gently bouncing him up and down, walking easy circuits of the library and the map room, humming to him in an attempt to settle his mood.

It doesn’t escape Castiel that Sam is also keeping them away from the bunker’s other two occupants, and after biding his time and collaring his temper he’s finally had enough of it.

He asks Sam to watch Ezra, turns his back on the protests, and sets off to find Dean.

It’s John he finds instead, passing by the open door of his room, and Castiel intends to keep going (it isn’t John he’s looking for) until he hears the Winchester patriarch’s voice calling him back.

“So. You’re an angel, huh.”

Castiel stops, finds himself torn between continuing on to find his husband and see what _the fuck_ has gotten into him, but he knows ignoring his father in law isn’t a good way to try and build a relationship with the man.

And he has a feeling that John will want to stay here, so he will have to do that.

There’s just something so…. It’s like when John spoke to him there, he was drawing a line in the sand and spitting across it.

Castiel tries to tell himself John is just strange to him. He has a massive adjustment to make, and Castiel wonders just how much Dean has told his father.

Does John know exactly what relationship he has with Dean? Does he know the baby currently in Sam’s arms is his grandson?

Castiel stands at John’s door, and stares at him guardedly.

John will have to lead this encounter, but Castiel can’t help but feel like he’s about to go into battle.

“Yes,” he says.

He doesn’t miss that John doesn’t invite him in.

“And you’re fucking my son. Wait, he’s _fucking_ you.”

And there it is. Castiel feels his Grace spark in reaction to the sheer hostility in John’s voice.

He tries to keep calm, one of them behaving like this is one too many, but there’s a part of him that wants to tell John if he comes for him, he’ll be sorry that he did.

“Dean and I are in a relationship,” he says.

“Right. And somehow, that kid out there...is yours. Both of yours.”

“Ezra,” Castiel says, bristling. “His name is Ezra and yes, he is our son. Your grandson.”

“And what exactly is _he_?”

Castiel has stood on the front lines of countless battles, and waited on watch to guard humans and other angels alike.

He has seldom lost control of himself, though there have been some notable exceptions, but at that moment, hearing that tone used to discuss his son, he has never found it harder not to simply, as Dean would say, fuck someone up.

And then Sam’s there, Dean at his back, the baby in Dean’s arms, and Sam has one hand on Castiel’s arm, and he’s gently pulling him back.

“Why don’t we go grab something to eat,” Sam says. “I’ll feed the little guy.”

As if waiting for someone to mention food, Ezra makes a happy gurgle.

Castiel glances at Dean, and he doesn’t let Sam move him. He is going to wait Dean out on this, and he stands there and he stares, and he waits.

But Dean never says anything, not even when Castiel takes Ezra from his arms and follows Sam back to the kitchen.

++

The next couple of days are fraught, to say the least.

John seems to be everywhere, at least everywhere Dean is.

Castiel has come to despair of spending a moment alone with his husband, and it’s something he badly needs.

He doesn’t want to be difficult over this; he understands Dean just got John back, and vice versa, but it seems like John’s purpose in being nearly surgically attached to Dean is more about preventing Castiel from having time with his husband and less about John himself catching up with his son.

In the end, feeling wretched about drawing Sam into this unwanted drama, Castiel still asks him to find a way to get John away from Dean.

He’s not unaware that Sam doesn’t seem as happy, anymore, to have John back.

But Sam steps up, and for the first time in what seems a very long time, Castiel gets Dean alone.

He isn’t sure what he expected, but he’s grateful when Dean tugs him into his arms.

“Hey,” he says. “I know it’s been rough, lately, huh.”

Castiel wants to acknowledge just how rough, but this isn’t solely about him. It’s been hard for Dean, too, and he suspects harder than he even knows.

“I miss you,” he says, even before he’s aware the words are out of his mouth. “We miss you.”

Dean huffs, presses his cheek to Castiel’s temple. “I’m right here, buddy. I just…. Cas, you’re not jealous I’m spending time with my dad, are you?”

He goes taut in Dean’s arms, and Dean knows it, and steps away.

“No,” Castiel says, and it comes out more forcefully than he means. “I know how much it means to you, and Sam, to have him back.”

Dean’s eyeing him, and Castiel can see that hard edge peaking through, the one he hasn’t seen from Dean in a long while, now.

He hasn’t forgotten it, though.

“Right. Look, don’t make this hard for me, Cas. Just…. Let him get used to being back before he has to get used to anything else, okay? That’s all I’m asking.”

And it doesn’t seem like much to ask, and Castiel knows it. All the same, it isn’t really that simple.

Because he can’t hear what Dean’s saying, and he wonders how much of it is what John has been saying to Dean.

“I don’t grudge you spending time with your father, Dean. But Ezra deserves to be able to spend time with his.”

That, Castiel guesses, was the wrong thing to say. Dean’s face goes stony, and he clenches his fists hard enough to turn the knuckles white.

“You saying I’m neglecting our kid?”

Well, at least he’s remembered Castiel was involved in there somewhere.

“No, but you haven’t….”

He doesn’t get to finish.

“I would never, _never_ , do that,” Dean says. “I can’t believe you’re using Ezra as a front when you’re the one who’s got the problem here.”

Suddenly, Castiel feels like they are both having a different conversation and he isn’t sure how that happened.

But he also knows that when Dean feels under attack, especially when he feels guilty, he fights back and sometimes the only way to stop an escalation is to be the one to back down.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

He truly is. 

Dean shrugs, some of the sharpness in him worn down, but he doesn’t look at Castiel.

“It’s hard for him,” he says. “Don’t make it any harder, okay? A little time, a little patience. I’ve done the same for you, right?”

Castiel nods, and tries not to feel like he was just slapped in the face. 

And then, when he thinks that maybe Dean’s right, and all of this will settle, John will become accustomed to him, to Ezra, to their life with Dean, if he can just show some of that patience that is inbuilt with angels, Dean pauses in the door and turns back to him.

“Uh, Cas…. Look, maybe for the next couple of days, you and Ezra could go back to your old room? Just to give my dad a chance to adjust. It’s all just a lot for him to process at the same time.

“I moved the cot this morning, so you just need to grab the rest of your gear.”

And then he’s gone, as if Castiel had agreed.

But it’s only for a couple of days.

++

A week later, and Dean hasn’t mentioned that it’s gone past that.

John seems….Castiel wants to use the term happier, but _smug_ is more like it. He barely looks at Castiel, or Ezra, even when they’re seated at the same table, and any conversation he’s part of never seems to include the angel or even acknowledge their presence (even when Sam tries to work things around to them).

Dean doesn’t seem to notice, and Castiel isn’t sure when he somehow ended up being on the outside of this.

But again, he tries to put Dean first. To accept where Dean is over this, trying to adapt to his father being back, a father who was never the most understanding or accepting of people, who…

Who could cowe and demoralise and terrify his sons with a look or a word or a gesture.

And Dean may be a man now, easily able to defend himself, but Castiel knows something about learned behaviour.

About programming. 

Clearly, so does John.

Dean doesn’t even realise he’s still seeking his father’s approval, not for the praise or the reward, which Castiel suspects Dean got little enough of, even when he did everything that John required.

No, Dean is trying hard to avoid the opposite, the consequences of disappointing John Winchester.

And Castiel doesn’t know what to do about that.

++

Ezra is harder to settle, picking up on the atmosphere in the bunker, and the lack of physical contact with his other father, the lack of affection from Dean, isn’t helping.

It’s not that Dean doesn’t care: he still makes up Ezra’s bottles, checks in that he’s okay. Castiel even catches him in their room, peeking down at him, and singing softly to him.

But these odd moments aren’t enough. Ezra needs Dean as he was before John arrived at their door.

He needs Dean like that too, but if there’s only enough time or affection, if Dean can only push through this, for one of them, then Castiel wants it to be foe their son.

And those glimpses of the Dean that Castiel knows his husband can be, that he is, without the black influence of his father, give him a gleam of hope.

This will pass, and he will support Dean, and they will all learn to get along.

He thinks that until John stumbles drunk into the bunker that night, and he isn’t alone.

There are three strangers with him, men, and they are as intoxicated as he is.

Since things became so charged, Castiel has mostly stayed in his room with the baby, soothing him there when he could and fighting down feelings of being isolated, almost being a prisoner in that one small room.

But sometimes he needed to get out, and Ezra wouldn’t settle, so used to gentle walks around the night-time bunker.

So Castiel had ventured to the library and they were there when John comes back.

Castiel is already wary of John; he can feel the bitter hate in the human for him, which hurts but is tolerable (Cas has, in his long life, endured much worse), but also for his child.

That, even for Dean, is something he can’t simply put up with and pretend it doesn’t matter.

So when he sees the sneer on John’s face, he switches Ezra to a one armed hold, snuggling the baby to his shoulder, and uses his free hand to put his blanket, his toys, and the empty bottle into the blue hold-all Dean bought for them just before the little one arrived.

He shoulders it, and is ready to leave, when one of the men knocks over some books, and they thump loudly to the ground.

Ezra, so used to the silence of this hour, startles and whimpers and Castiel knows full blown tears are only moments away.

“Please be quiet,” he chides, though he keeps his voice low and level, so the baby isn’t further unsettled. He rocks him a little, whispers gently to him in his native tongue, and starts to turn away

“Awww, look at that little thing,” one of the men says. “That your grandson, Jonny?”

Castiel doesn’t wait to hear John vent his spite; he doesn’t really want Ezra around John at the best of times (and he almost laughs at the irony of that expression, since even the most determined optimist would struggle to find such a moment since John’s return), he especially doesn’t now he’s drunk and has brought equally drunk strangers into their home.

For a moment, he considers telling them to go; but the subtle shift in things in the bunker hasn’t passed him by. He’d never before considered the dynamic of things there, because he’d never had to.

But perhaps he’s been naive, because if there was a _turf_ element to their home, John has been steadily stealing ground.

And he’s Dean and Sam’s father, and Castiel…. Castiel isn’t really sure what he is, now.

“Yeah,” John says, and there’s a brooding tone to his voice that Castiel doesn’t like. He’s faster than Castiel would have thought possible, given his breath stinks of liquor and his eyes are glazed, but he gets in front of them. “My little grandson.”

He holds out his hands.

Castiel stops, but the look he gives his _father in law_ makes it clear a ravenous vampire has better chance of holding Ezra than John Winchester.

“We’re going back to bed,” Castiel says, and when John doesn’t move, he makes to go around him.

One of the drunks staggers over, getting in the way and reaching out a shaky hand as if to pet Ezra.

Castiel doesn’t hesitate to give the man a shove. He reigns it in, so the drunk stumbles back against the wall instead of finding himself across the room with his head caved in.

John’s smile is there, sudden and black and dangerous.

Castiel isn’t sure how, but he feels as if he’s suddenly made a very foolish error, but then John stands aside and Castiel takes the opportunity to escape.

He manages to quiet Ezra enough that he doesn’t cry too loudly and so wake Sam and Dean.

About half an hour later, he hears the men leaving, the bunker door close, and John’s footsteps approaching.

They stop outside the door, and they linger there for too long, driving Castiel to yank open the door.

John’s just standing there, and he’s wearing that smile again, and then he slopes away, whistling quietly down the hall.

++

Somehow, Castiel knows the morning will bring upset and pain.

He isn’t wrong.

He’s just fed Ezra, and changed him, a duty Dean used to share in (even though he grumped about ‘diaper duty’, demanding hazard pay that usually came in the form of a kiss or a hug, and would sometimes try to guilt Sam into helping instead though certainly not with the same reward), when there’s a knock at the door.

Dean’s standing there, looking as torn between anger and shame as Castiel’s ever seen him, and he asks Castiel if he’ll come to the map room.

Castiel does, Ezra dozing in his arms.

John is sitting at the table, and there’s an ice pack against his face, and he actually flinches as Castiel comes in.

“This is bullshit,” Sam says.

Dean waves his brother into silence. “Castiel, what happened last night?”

 _Castiel_. The last time Dean used his full name was when they’d had a fight, a huge sleeping-in-separate-rooms fight that had sent Sam to a motel for the night until they ‘sorted out their shit’ to quote the younger of the two brothers.

Castiel had spent that night convinced Dean would leave him (it was just before he conceived; in fact that argument, and the makeup that followed was the night that had resulted in Ezra coming into the world) or tell him to go.

Dean had kept his distance, for a time, and then come to him, and was horrified that Castiel had thought it was the end of their relationship.

He had been quick to assure the angel that he wouldn’t let anything come between them. And when Ezra was born, Dean had made that vow again, for the three of them.

Looking at Dean now, Castiel realises Dean might not have meant absolutely _anything_. Because when Dean made it, his father wasn’t back in their lives.

Castiel tells Dean. He keeps it simple, doesn’t tell Dean how he and Ezra had felt confined to that room, and how he’d finally been desperate enough to dare return to their old routine, even if for just one night.

He tells them about John coming in, and the men he brought with them, and one of them trying to touch Ezra, and pushing the man out of the way.

John huffs at that, his very tone, the look on his face, screaming indignant astonishment.

Castiel is beginning to guess that John has already given his sons a very different version of events.

“Dean,” Sam warns, but again Dean silences him.

“My dad says he just wanted to hold Ezra and you went nuts on him.”

Now it’s Castiel who flinches, and Sam draws in a sharp breath.

Castiel stares at his husband. He isn’t sure how they came to this so quickly, the old mistrust that he understands in Dean, for there have been times he earned it, rising so quickly from slumber when he had honestly (foolishly) though it gone for good.

He isn’t sure what to say. Because whatever he does, it will only work against him.

If he tells the truth, he’ll be calling John a liar since he can see who Dean already believes.

If he goes along, and apologises Dean will wonder what kind of being he’s mated to, has borne a child with, and will wonder if Ezra is at all safe.

And John will have something to hold over him.

So instead he says nothing.

“Sam,” Dean says, “can you take Ezra and give me and Cas a few minutes alone?”

Sam looks set to refuse, but then John gets up stiffly, and whimpers a little, and Castiel has to fight the urge to give him a slow clap.

He wonders how John came by the reddish bruising rising beneath that ice pack.

Self inflicted? Or did he fall as he went back to his room?

Sam pats Cas’s shoulder, takes Ezra, and rather pointedly doesn’t slow down for John, who comes shuffling after him.

“I think...maybe you should move out of the bunker. Just for a couple of days, maybe a week. Just to let things settle with my dad.”

Castiel is no longer sure whether it’s best to say something, or nothing; he can’t speak, because that is not what he expected Dean to say.

But he has to find words, because Dean is looking at him, expecting a reply, and it feels so like before, when he thought he was safe, he thought he was _home_ , and once again someone is forcing Dean to make him go.

No. Not forcing, not this time. 

This time, Dean has made his own choice.

“If I go, Ezra comes with me.” Because even though he isn’t sure yet where he’ll go, it won’t be like before. He has resources, and his Grace, and even without them, the outside world would still be safer for his son than leaving him in the same building as John Winchester.

Dean looks set to argue (after all, he thinks Castiel to be _crazed_ ) but then he yields.

And that tells Cas something, that Dean spoke of anger, which makes it somehow better and worse, becuase it also means he might suspect things aren’t as simple as John is making them out to be.

Yet, he’s still making them go.

“Sam called Jody,” Dean says, and that means that even before he’d knocked on the door, this was going to happen. No matter what Castiel said. “She’s got a room spare now the girls have moved out.”

This just proves it; if Dean felt he was a threat, he wouldn’t let him leave with Ezra, and he certainly wouldn’t have let Sam arrange someplace for him to stay.

Sam helps him pack, and Castiel can see he’s holding back as he helps load them into the truck, securing the car seat, and nuzzling Ezra before stepping back to pull Castiel into an embrace.

“This isn’t over,” he whispers into the angel’s ear. “If I can’t talk him round, I’ll come to you. I’m not losing you two for _him_.”

Castiel knows he isn’t talking about Dean. But the thought of Dean here alone with John is just as unpalatable as Sam here alone with him. 

But he can’t ask Sam to stay, to subject himself to a father he might love but has come to hate in equal measure.

“I’ll call you,” he promises. And then, rolling down the window as the door to the garage slides open, adds, “Please, Sam. Be careful.”

And that’s all he can do.

++

A week turns into two, and then it’s a month.

Jody becomes, even in that short time, one of the best friends Castiel has ever known.

She is an expert in all things child rearing, and Ezra loves her from the start. She isn’t in the least put out by Castiel being an angel (“I went on a date with the King of Hell,” she says, as if that is an explanation, and quickly adds “That wasn’t me making a move on you.”).

Her home becomes, if he can be that bold, his home. 

He and Sam speak several times a week, and Castiel learns they are hunting again, the three of them. Spending more time on the road, and though he doesn’t sound _happy_ , he seems more at ease with the situation than before.

They are all different men now, and Castiel starts to wonder if he was the problem all along; if his absence is allowing that family to heal, to mend bridges and build new ones where the damage was too great.

It’s three months since they left that Castiel realises they won’t be going back.

Jody holds him through that, and he’s ashamed to be crying in her arms, burdening her further when she’s already been so good to them.

So she sits him down and makes it very clear that she considers him and Ezra her family and if Castiel would be willing to stay forever that would be fine by her.

He meets Donna soon after, and considers himself to be very fortunate to now have two amazing friends.

Donna is very ‘huggy’ though. Secretly, Castiel doesn’t mind.

++

It’s nearly six months later when the door goes, and Jody heads through to answer it.

Ezra is in his high chair, showing a stubbornness Castiel’s sure doesn’t come from him about eating a small pot of apricot and banana, when he feels a familiar presence behind him.

He turns slowly, almost afraid to look, but Dean is standing there, Sam at his back.

None of them move, or speak, and Jody finally rolls her eyes, and takes the baby jar from Castiel and shoos all three of them into the lounge.

“I’ll feed this little charmer,” she says. “You three have got things to discuss.”

Do they? But Castiel leads them through, and Sam closes the door behind them, and then there’s some more standing and staring and not speaking, until Castiel can’t take another moment of it.

“What do you want,” he says, and though Sam is there too, they all know the question’s for Dean.

When Dean looks at him, there’s such pain in his eyes that Castiel almost goes to him.

But that’s not who they are anymore.

“Cas,” he starts. Then he seems to get stuck, and Sam steps up for him.

“We want you to come home.”

++

In a way, Castiel was right. His presence was an impediment, but not to John’s relationship with his sons being rebuilt, restored, healthier and without the jagged scars of what went before.

It took him, and Ezra, being cast out for John to slowly take back his old position as the Winchester patriarch; having succeeded in getting Dean to choose (and that’s an oversimplification, Castiel knows, putting it like that, but it’ll do for now) him over his husband and son.

That boldened John, and inch by inch things crept back to how they used to be.

But John had forgotten these were not the boys he left behind. They had survived him, and his legacy, and maybe _they_ had forgotten that, but it eventually came back to them.

It had some help, when they bumped into the drunks from that last night Castiel and Ezra had spent in the bunker, and John had done his best to ignore them, which had made Sam suspicious and he’d grabbed one and got the truth from him.

John had turned on Sam, looking to beat him down one way or another, and Dean was never one to stand by and see Sam attacked, however it came, and whoever it came from.

By the time that was done, they knew all of it, and John was left behind, alone, while the brothers got into the Impala and started for Jody’s.

And now, here they were, Dean pleading silently with his eyes, while Sam was the one to ask Castiel if he, if they, would come home.

++

The bunker feels very different when they return, and it takes Castiel a while to realise it won’t ever feel like it did before.

Nothing really will.

That first day is difficult. Only Sam seems able to carry on as if they haven’t been separated for six months, but he can’t maintain the needed level of normality for three people and even he ends up sitting in silence, reading, or listening to something on his cell through a set of earbuds.

Dean, Castiel feels, has a lot he wants to say, but none of it makes it out.

He keeps loitering around them, like he wants to do as he did before.

Touch Castiel without needing to ask or worry that it’s unwelcome (Castiel relished Dean’s touch, the kind permissible when Sam’s was there, and the kind Dean saved for when they were lying together behind a closed bedroom door).

Pick Ezra up, and hoist him overhead, jiggling him a little to make him giggle in that squeaky way, or burp him gently against his shoulder, with a towel protecting his shirt.

But Dean also seems to know he surrendered those rights when he told them to leave, and in the end he just goes, and Castiel hears his room door close over behind him.

Sam, despite apparently being engrossed in his phone, takes out the earbuds and comes over.

He picks Ezra up, and rocks him a little, and then sits down next to the angel.

“What are you going to tell him?”

Sam, astute, and wise as always.

Because Castiel had been agonising over a decision that he’s only realised (after Sam, it seems) that he’s already made.

He leaves Ezra with Sam and goes to Dean’s room.

++

It’s hard, finding their feet again, their standing with each other. Even for Sam, who’s stuck watching all of them hurt and hurting for them.

This is something he can’t fix, and he too has his moments of anger, when he lashes out, at Dean, at Castiel, and at John though he’s not been heard of by them since that day they found out what he’d done.

Castiel knows a little more of it, by then. It’s no surprise to him that a man who lost his wife to a demon, who had to raise his sons to hunt monsters both as an act of self defence and a step on their path to vengeance, would have a problem sharing his sons with such a creature.

He would never see Castiel as anything but something they would have knifed and burned in the past.

And as for Ezra…

But in truth, Castiel suspects even a human male would have been attacked by John. He knows from Dean that John Winchester was something of a traditionalist. 

Men took up with women, not other men. 

Castiel was an evil in his eyes from the start; an angel, in a male vessel, who had (even worse) somehow ended up pregnant by John’s son and gave birth to a half angel, another _creature_.

Sam thinks that no matter who either of them had ended up with, John would never have accepted it.

He’d come back, wanting to be to them the all powerful force he was before; the Winchester patriarch, whose orders were never questioned, who was obeyed without delay.

Anyone else would have been in the way of that, but what threatened John the most was that Castiel had a place in both his sons’ hearts, and that he could see how happy and open and secure he’d made Dean.

Castiel was the enemy to everything John needed. And so he had to be dealt with, sent on his way.

But though Castiel’s back, there is no _going back_. It was painful, telling Dean. His self worth issues raised their head, and he didn’t fight, not immediately.

Then he did, in his own way, trying very hard to make up for six months’ of (Dean’s word, not his) neglect and insisting he wasn’t trying to earn back what he’d lost.

Even though Castiel knew that he had his heart set upon it.

But much as he still loved Dean, and was still in love with him, and much as he knew the sway John Winchester held over both his sons, Castiel knew it wouldn’t work.

If it had just been him, he suspected he would have weakened. It would have been both easy and the hardest thing ever to go back to Dean’s bed, to let himself be held, and to get up the next morning and pretend the intervening months had simply never occurred.

Or perhaps even if it had just been him, this time he would have still said no. Drawn his line, and stayed on his side of it, because how many times could he take being thrown aside before one of those times finally and irreparably broke him?

He hasn’t forgotten what Dean said that day, or what Dean said to him when he was lost to insanity, even though he knows Dean thinks he has.

But he has Ezra to think of too. There’s a part of him that won’t be able to forgive Dean choosing John over their son, even if Castiel was the one to take the baby away.

It’s not wrong to want to protect himself, or his son. Jody tells him that when he calls her, or vice versa, which happens at least twice a week, and when she comes to visit or he does.

He mustn’t feel guilty for taking care of himself and Ezra first.

The longing, though; that never goes away. Not his, not Dean’s. 

The wishing that John hadn’t come back that night, or had come back a better man than the one who left.

Castiel knows Dean will never stop blaming himself, and though both he and Sam try, the only person who can make this alright with Dean is Dean, and they both know he may never be of a mind to try.

But other than that, their lives go on. 

They raise Ezra together, and when he’s older, he kind of understands that while some daddies are _together_ together, his aren’t.

But he has them both, and he has his uncle, and his auntie Jody who visits a lot, and really, that’s enough.


End file.
